Also, provided THE SHIPPING NEWS ever gets made, is J.G. still attached to it?

Will Goldsmith actually get to do it? Only time will tell.

Goldsmith was attached to THE SHIPPING NEWS when Fred Schepisi was directing it. Now that the new director is (temporarily? permanently?) Lasse Hallstrom, who knows what'll happen. He might well assign his most recent favorite Rachel Portman instead. Or anyone else that feels right at the moment. I doubt Goldsmith is any longer formally attached to THE SHIPPING NEWS, but depending on its schedule and the composer's feelings about it, and the filmmakers' decision, anything is possible.

You're right not to trust the IMDb, Cap'n, at least not as far as upcoming releases are concerned ...

Please allow me to re-post my comments about Goldsmith’s forthcoming assignments from my “Goldsmith’s LAST ORDERS” thread –

On top of the already discussed LAST ORDERS and ALONG CAME A SPIDER, Goldsmith’s latest assignments include Harold Becker’s DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE and Jerry Zucker’s RAT RACE.
DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE involves a divorced father (John Travolta) learning that the new stepfather of his eleven-year-old son is not the man he claims to be. He sets out to try to save his son from what becomes a life-and-death situation. The screenplay comes from Lewis Colick, who was also involved with ALONG COMES A SPIDER. Shooting is due to begin early in 2001, and based on Becker and Travolta’s recent work I am anything but optimistic. As far as Goldsmith’s scoring is concerned, DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE is ripe for a mixture of US MARSHALS’ bombast and slurping RUDY marmalade and molasses.

And then there’s Zucker’s RAT RACE, apparently a ‘road’ comedy in which a billionaire Las Vegas casino owner sets up a gambling scheme in which gamblers wage on which of six candidates can find the $2 million that is hidden somewhere in a locker – sounds really promising. This film is loosely based on the 1963 film It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad world – it gets even ‘better’. The movie includes such cinematic luminaries as Cuba Gooding Jr., Whoopi Goldberg, Jon Lovitz, Wayne Knight, Kathy Najimy, John Cleese and Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean). Considering that RAT RACE seems to have been in production since Edwardian days, I wouldn’t expect this movie to be anything other than a straight-to-video non-event.

In both of these movies, and LAST ORDERS and ALONG CAME A SPIDER for that matter, I fail to see how Goldsmith’s input (based on his approach to film scoring since 1992’s FOREVER YOUNG) will do anything to enhance the proceedings. Indeed, several of these movies would seem alien to Goldsmith’s prevailing mono-stylistic, defunct and anti-CMS approach to scoring. Still, based on events over the past year or so, whether Goldsmith’s name appears when the credits finally roll on any of these upcoming movies is seriously in doubt.